1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a parking card which is intended for the charge-related actuation of a parking barrier and is in the form of a sheet-like plastic piece having a front side and a rear side and having a machine-readable data carrier for storing car-park information and user information and, if appropriate, the entrance time and departure time.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Parking cards of this type are issued to the user on passing entrance-control stations of a multi-storey car park or open-air car park, the data necessary for calculation of parking charges being stored on the parking card. The use of paying machines with a computer-controlled method of proceeding with the parking operations makes it necessary to store the various items of parking information or identification codings in a machine-readable manner. Use is thus made of, on the one hand, so-called magnetic-card tickets which consist of paper and have a magnetic strip for storing the individual items of parking data and, on the other hand, plastic tickets with an individualizing identification coding, e.g. a bar code, or an integrated, programmable chip.
Whereas the magnetic-card ticket which consists of paper can only be used once, the parking cards which consist of plastic and of a programmable chip or an identification coding can be used for successive parking operations, to be precise as a single parking card for different users, as a debit parking card or as an access card for long-stay parkers. Repeated collection and issuing of the plastic parking cards requires entrance-control and departure-control stations which store the parking cards to be issued, feed them to a read/write station and deliver them in issuing openings which are accessible to the car-park user. For the calculation of the parking times and parking charges to proceed in a problem-free manner, the parking cards consequently have to cover a plurality of transport paths, for which purpose conveying belts or conveying rollers are generally provided. Owing to the frequent buckling of the parking cards during their transport to the read/write stations, the likelihood of disruption is great, with the result that a smooth issuing operation and/or collection of the parking cards is not ensured. The likelihood of disruption is increased to an even greater extent by the fact that it is possible to read the machine-readable data carriers from only one direction.
The object of the invention is thus to provide a parking card, which is easily constructed and can be handled with ease and permits the installation of an inexpensive parking service system.